


Dutch Courage

by boombangbing



Series: Amplification [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 06:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1142328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce meets Betty for the first time when he's twenty four, and makes a complete fool of himself. Betty doesn't mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dutch Courage

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel ficlet for [Amplification](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1006353), posted on [my tumblr](http://boombangbing.tumblr.com) a couple of months ago.

He didn't usually go to bars, but his room mate was having some kind of manly get together thing and Bruce decided that in the name of friendship he'd accept Dominic's offer at face value, i.e., that Bruce wouldn't have his bodily autonomy abused in some fashion, either by being stuffed into something, or tied _onto_ something. He was twenty four, a little old to be bullied by jocks. This was Harvard, anyway, they weren't beef heads.

They didn't bully him, in fact Dominic and his friends were all pretty nice to him, when they weren't going off to hit on girls. They ignored him just enough to leave him at a table twiddling his thumbs, but not enough that he felt able to leave in righteous anger. Dominic drifted back every now and then to see how Bruce was doing, which meant Bruce had to stay there, looking at all the people hooking up, reading his quantum field theory textbook.

Around ten, when Bruce was neck deep in the nonrelativistic limit, a new group of people came in, talking at the tops of the their lungs. He frowned at his book – why did people have to talk so _loud_ in bars? no one wanted to hear their conversation – and looked up as they passed. There were a couple of guys and three girls, all of them pretty, but one was just... She was tall and dark-haired, and laughing with her entire body at something her friend was saying. His stomach gurgled uneasily.

He watched them walk up to the bar, and the girl looked back for a moment, catching his gaze. She smiled and he jerked and looked back down at his book.

The girl and her friends sat a few tables away from him, and he couldn't help but steal glances at her. She didn't talk that much, but when she did, everyone listened. He wondered what that felt like.

She looked young, younger than him, and maybe not even old enough to be in there – she never went up to the bar to get drinks, he noticed.

“Hey, man, you should go talk to her,” Dominic said, suddenly appearing at his side.

Bruce jumped and looked up at him. “What?”

“The cute brunette. She's looking at you too.”

Bruce pulled a face. “No, she's not, she's just thinking I'm a weirdo that keeps staring at her and it's freaking her out.”

“You're a mind reader now?”

He shrugged and Dominic rolled his eyes.

“Come on, man, you haven't been on a single date since I've known you.”

“You've known me for six months,” he muttered.

“Yeah, and that's a long time not to be dating in college. Look, you're the smartest person I've ever met, you can go talk to a girl.”

“It's _because_ I'm so smart that I can't talk to girls.”

Dominic rolled his head back against his seat and groaned. “Just get drunk, then! Like the rest of us!”

“I don't drink.”

Dominic rolled his eyes again and started to get up. “Compromise yourself. Get laid. Chill out!”

Bruce ignored Dominic's dumb advice and sulked over his textbook for another half an hour, but he still couldn't stop looking at her, and when Dominic dropped a bottle of beer in front of him at close to eleven, he drank it, and then another three in quick succession, until he felt dizzy and couldn't focus on the words in his book. He didn't feel any less nervous, though.

“Okay,” Dominic said, looming over Bruce again. He stank pretty bad of tequila and Bruce wrinkled his nose. “Now go talk to her.”

“'m more nervous now than before,” he said.

“ _God _, Bruce, just grow a pair, go over there, and say 'hi'. Look, half of her friends have wandered off, that makes it less bad, right?”__

__“I dunno,” Bruce mumbled._ _

__“Oh my God,” Dominic muttered, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him up and out from behind the table. “Get over there!” he said, and shoved Bruce's in the girl's direction._ _

__Bruce stumbled over to her table, and her and her two remaining friends looked up at him expectantly. He stared back at them. God, say something!, he thought._ _

__“Hi,” he said._ _

__“Hello,” the brunette replied, and somehow smiled at him and didn't seem weirded out. Bruce blinked approximately forty times in under two minutes, and she snorted a little. “I'm Betty, this is Lauren and Paige.”_ _

__Lauren and Paige chorused their hellos and Betty looked at him expectantly again._ _

__“I'm...” Someone bumped into him as they passed by, and it completely threw off his equilibrium._ _

__Betty smiled again. “You're pretty drunk, you wanna sit down?” She nodded to an empty chair next to Paige. Bruce dropped down onto it and took a deep breath._ _

__“So...” Betty said, drawing out the syllable._ _

__“I'm Bruce,” he finally piped up._ _

__Betty dropped her head and laughed._ _


End file.
